NEW YORK — Angy Rivera glided through the airport as though she owned it, giddy with excitement at her brave new world. Then she saw the security guards and froze.

After a lifetime of avoiding any public place where she might be asked for identification, had she just made the biggest mistake of her life? Would she be stopped, arrested, detained — and deported? Nervously, she handed over her boarding pass.

The security guard barely glanced at her Colombian passport, questioned her about a tube of hair mousse — and waved her through. Elated, she boarded the plane.

“I am flying for the first time,” the 22-year-old criminal-justice student from Queens wrote, in a jubilant essay. “I left something up in between the air and clouds. Not my luggage. Fear.”

That pulsing fear that had been part of her life for 19 years, since her mother brought her here from Colombia — gone, swept away by President Barack Obama’s announcement in August that some young illegal immigrants would be allowed temporary status and work permits.

Now she could visit the Department of Motor Vehicles, just to witness the crazy lines her friends complained about. Now she could savor the simple pleasure of walking home at night without the nagging fear that any little incident might trigger her deportation.

Visible leader

This is the way it is for the young men and women who suddenly can be sheltered from deportation under Obama’s policy. So far, about 180,000 have applied for the program, and nearly 4,600 have been approved, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. With a flick of a bureaucratic switch, young immigrants are coming out of the shadows.

But Angy Rivera is special.

“Angy is our rock star,” jokes her friend, Melissa Garcia Velez.

In the past two years, Rivera has become one of the most visible leaders in a nationwide movement of young people brought here illegally as children and fighting for the right to stay.

Along with Velez, she is a member of the New York State Youth Leadership Council, a nonprofit, youth-led organization that fights for immigrant rights. Her funny, pointed videos about the perils of navigating a life that is “undocumented and unafraid” are posted on the Internet.

Her “Ask Angy” advice column has counseled hundreds of young illegal immigrants on everything from dating to suicide.

But suddenly the star, the one who can always research the answers and write about them in pithy prose, is stumped. And scared.

Sitting down with a lawyer, she learned that not only is she eligible for deferred action — a murky status that allows recipients a reprieve but is not a path to citizenship — she might be eligible for much more.

A deeply buried horror from her childhood, which surfaced during a rigorous examination by her lawyer, means she might qualify for a special visa granted only to victims of serious crime. And that could lead to a green card and citizenship.

The knowledge has turned Rivera’s head upside down. If she is no longer “undocumented and unafraid,” as her T-shirt proclaims, then what will she become? If she is no longer illegal, she wonders, can she continue to offer advice to those who are?

New identity

It took a week before Rivera could bring herself to tell friends at the NYSYLC, and when she did, she blurted it out nervously, as though fearful of their reaction.

“Where is my place now that I’m not deportable?” she asked them.

Now that the goal she has fought for so long is within her grasp, must she reject the person she has become — the “unidentified identity” she writes about in her poems?

“Don’t worry,” said Velez, giving her friend a hug. “You’ll always be undocumented in my heart.”

But Rivera was near tears.

Twenty-year-old Galaviz Luna understands. Brought from Mexico at the age of 4, he became involved in the NYSYLC at 16 and through “random luck” received a green card at 18 after being sponsored by a relative. The transition, he tells Rivera, was “surreal.”

He was able to work, get financial aid for college, travel, pursue all the dreams that had been denied him so long. Next year, he hopes to go to Cuba. He tells her it is a gift.

And then he said the words she dreaded. “You cannot hold on to your undocumented identity,” he said. “Because that is not who you will be.”

Rivera buried her head in her hands.

She needs time, she says, to process the news, to figure out her new identity, whatever that might be.

She has no desire to rush headlong into any kind of new status or new life.

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